about
Oscar Enderstein is a visual artist whose practice is rooted in photography as material.
By processing images through compression, noise and digital degradation, his work examines the breakdown of photographic indexicality and the transformation of image into signal.
My art originates from manipulated photography. I approach the photographic raw material much like a producer in a studio – as a recording to be mixed, distorted, and reshaped. To me, the documentary photograph is never a finished work, but source material in need of treatment.
I am interested in the point where the image ceases to be a document and instead becomes something else. By erasing the original truth, I create a reality where the ritualistic and the accidental take over. Fragments and evidence of the original photograph remain as subtle echoes beneath the surface, but the power of the work lies in exploring what the image can become once its indexical form has ceased to exist.
My works are photographic documents colliding violently with the digital process; I create digital crash sites. I seek the abject and our collective ”schaulust” – the perverse impulse to be unable to look away from the broken. I chase the point where an image becomes repulsive, yet simultaneously impossible to release from one’s gaze. When I reach that point, I can sleep.
Creating is my valve. By carving into polished surfaces and fragmentary memories, the crash site becomes the only place that feels real. There, in the remains of the demolished, I seek the sublime to make sense of the inner chaos.
Selected Works / Series
The Laundromat Cycles (2026)
Null (2025–2026)
Index (2025)